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Spain, Morocco To Build Undersea Rail Tunnels
DoraLives writes "The BBC reports that Spain and Morocco 'have agreed to build a 39-kilometre rail tunnel beneath the Mediterranean Sea, to link Europe and Africa.' and that 'This plan could be put into action as early as next year...' Fairly daunting technical piece of work should they attempt it, but the prospect of an all-rail trip from Edinburgh to Tangiers is intriguing to say the least."
The future economic benefit is going to be interesting, if they can pull it off.
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This is an excellent idea! It will boost tourism to North Africa, and hopefully spur further development and political stability in the North African nations, such as Morroco, Tunisia, Eretria, etc. Look at what the Chunnel has done for cross-traffic between England and France.
You forgot about tourism being the biggest industry.
Much of europe, and of course Spain, are linked with very good railway system. A link to North Africa will boost tourism to both the countries as one has to travel to Spain enroute to Africa.
Lets not forget other possible usage of the link, like transportation of goods, etc.
geek page at KY speaks
When I was over in France I saw a doco about one of the unintended consequences of the Chunnel: muslim & eastern european refuges. It's easier for them to cross in the train. (I can't remember which way they were headed! but I know it was an "issue" the news was talking about). I think they'd set up a camp for them because they had no money and nowhere else to go.
I'd think a link from Europe to Africa will be very severely subject to this problem.
Maybe the point is to *generate* business. There will be a new route to get goods & people between Europe & Africa, and guess who benefits from this new route? Spain & Morocco.
The success of that is dependent on other infrastructure pieces in both countries of course, but the idea is interesting.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Also, does anyone know how the depth of this tunnel would compare to that of the Chunnel?
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
But isn't this the type of attitude that led to the traffic congestion problems in most major cities? Despite a set schedule, most train/tram systems do get people to their destination with a minimal amount of time, since they tend to have the right of way or exclusive tracks that allows them to avoid traffic congestion.
-B
Because of the curvature of the Earth the shortest path between San Francisco and Tokyo goes as high as 48 N. So going through the Bering strait wouldn't be too much of a detour, and connecting Japan to mainland Asia isn't laughably hard. Check a map, or better yet, a globe.
Doesn't seem like a necessary scenario. One assumes security would be comparable to the Channel Tunnel, which has been in existence for a good long time without such an incident. Plus, if Muslim fanatics from Morocco want to blow up a tunnel, there's no need for them to come from the Morocco side, and no need to blow up a tunnel that affects their home country, since fanatics are already documented as living in the two countries on the ends of the Channel Tunnel (UK, France) and Germany. Yet nothing has happened to the Channel Tunnel. (OK, yet.)
As far as I know, the Straight of Gibraltar is 13km at is't narrowest point. While I appreciate there may be other reasons (depth of sea, etc), it does seem a bit odd that they'd choose a much longer (and potentially riskier to construct) route than strictly necessary.
Anyone have any solid ideas why they'd choose a 40km route over a ~13km one?
It might be a misprint, but a tunnel under the water doesn't have to be as complicated as one under Boston. It's just a big concrete-lined bore-hole. You don't have to worry about making sure the ground above you doesn't collapse, after you get past a certain depth. It doesn't even need to be ventilated, as the trains will be run by electricity. By comparison, a car tunnel under a city is shallow and has to be ventilated. (so people don't die from suffocating on trapped car exhaust.) While not as large an undertaking, the Big Dig is much more intricate.
I am all for high-speed trains. The technologically is great. Wish passenger trains were more useful in the US.
But, have they considered the social impact of this?
I mean isn't the EU having a real tough time dealing with asylum seekers and integrating Muslims into their culture? Look at the French "no head scarves" ban, as an example. While this would make tourism to North Africa easier and improve the economies of those countries, is the EU ready to handle allowing more people (and the percentage of them that will either be illegal immigrants or asylum seekers) to come into the EU? I doubt it. The EU keeps Turkey out of the EU, in large part because Turkey is a Muslim country, and therefore not European enough (despite removing all references to Christianity from the now failed EU Constitution). Also, with the huge AIDS crisis in Africa, will the increase in movement mean an increase in European AIDS cases?
These are all problems humanity should solve, but being human we aren't going to solve them.
{exasperated_sigh} You know, technology would work a lot better if we could just keeps the humans out of the equation. {/exasperated_sigh}
It's fair to say that the Big Dig was too expensive, but I don't think that it could be considered "easy" relative to anything.
I think your point would've been better made comparing this project to the Chunnel. That 30 mile link cost about $13 billion (U.S.). So, yeah, 30 million seems a bit on the low side.
I think you will find statements like that is overly optimistic. It's 25 years from now, you seem to think of 2030 as something out of Flash Gordon. Never predict the future by relying on future inventions. It' slike saying land will be in abundance in the future because we will have the ability to graft gills on humans.
While the techniqes you describe certainly is/will come about in laberatorys and research, its a far cry from industrial applications.
How on Earth could it ever be profitable to connect Spain and Morocco? It's impossible. Madrid is the only city in Spain that could rival London, Paris or Brussels. And it already takes 6 hours to get from Madrid to the proposed tunnel! And then, there is no large business city on the other side. No business traveler will be taking the train. The plane will always be preferred on such distances.
Am I making sense? Had to work throughout the night.
Strangely enough, there does not seem to be so many european posts about that subject, that is truly interesting.
For my fellow globalized-citizens from America, two things :
- Oh no, those fucking africans are going to invade Europe, because there will be no more control over immigration. Maybe you are not aware of it, but we have something called in here the European Union. And that means that England and France are virtually borderless for the transportation of people. This is not because you red it in the press that the train project will be the same. Why ? Because Morocco is not part of the European Union. It is only applying for a "special relationship". Thus, one can imagine that controls there will be tight, very tight. Spain has been sailing a tight ship so far.
- What happens if an islamist/terrorist is plantin a bomb out there ?Stop being so neurotic about that. People with dark skin don't have bombs in their suitcases. Only people with mad minds have bombs in their suitcases. Morocco suffered a terrorist attack ; Bali suffered a terrorist attack. Don't you have the slightest impression than terrorists are focusing on the shifting of Islam from the inside ? No ? Think about it. There will be no more risk for a bomb here than in every other place in the world.
What's interesting here is how spain is changing its mind about morocco. After all the fud about the Turah island, this is one more step forward to enhance the relationship between Spain and Morocco. It a step for solving the immigration problem, since this is a path to rationalize the constant flux of immigrants coming to Europe from Spain. It is a step for integrating North Africa into Europe. It is a step for making the Arab people understand that they are *not* rejected. Etc.Tough there have been some funny jokes (I loved the thread about grammar/spelling), people should speak more quietly about issues that they don't know anything about.
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
I hope this is not just a government waste program between the two nations, as it could potentially be a very expensive one.
No matter what the final cost is going to be, it's going to be a tiny fraction of what the US spent in Iraq. And dollar for dollar, it's going to be far more effective in promoting democracy, helping economic development, and stopping terrorism.
It seems like it would be a horrific waste of money if it is just being done for national prestige.
Funny, that's what I always think about most US military spending.
Anyone have any solid ideas why they'd choose a 40km route over a ~13km one?
Then they would be only the third longest tunnel. Whats the fun in that?
To any of you that don't work on transportation networks...
Do you have the slightest idea how much shorter the trip from Europe to Africa will be? Imagine Holland for example, which exports wheat to African countries in many situations. Their cheapest way to travel is of course by road, but too time consuming and it needs a trip through Continental Europe, bosphorus (Turkey, which they don't like at all), then Syria, Libanon, Israel, Egypt, etc. Now we get a direct link from Spain to Marocco.
Here is my prediction on how things will go, if this actually is successful.
1. Marocco and Spain will get rich from customs and the rest of the two continents will depend heavily on them for trade routes.
2. The English shipping industry will loose considerable amounts of money (they already did with the England/France tunnel).
3. Marocco will once again gain political influence in Africa, and will of course probably win over Western Sahara (there's been a disbute there for a long time, in case you didn't know).
4. Someone will figure out a way to involve Linux in this, eventhough Microsoft advertisements will fill the tunnel.
In case anyone wants to know more about the geography of transportation, a good intro is located at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/
Also, a car tunnel under a city has the huge problems of getting right-of-way and working around existing structures. All the political hassles and what-not. I would imagine Boston would be one of the most-expensive-possible places to do that sort of thing, with it's massively built-up government and public/private infrastructure. It probably costs a Million dollars to install a newspaper sales box in downtown Boston.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Actually you're missing smth here.
:p
Madrid is only 4 hours and a half away from Malaga on a pseudo-high speed train. Once the TGV-AVE (High speed) rail comes to Malaga (1 hour car drive from Algeciras-Gibraltar) it'd be piece of cake to connect everything to the new AVE railroad which
will probably reduce the time to Madrid to 3 hours.
Stretch that westwards and you've got yourself Africa connected to Portugal as well.
How many hundred of thousands of muslims cross Spain from France every year on vacation? A big
police-emergency operation is devised every year to drive all this people south from France to Algeciras where they massively get onboard ferries (somewhat like D-Day but with old cars)
If done properly this tunnel will cost twice as budgeted but will be eventually (circa 2100) profitable.
It's 25 years from now, you seem to think of 2030 as something out of Flash Gordon.
When I was in grade school, I remember being amazed at my mom going in for the then brand-new laser surgery on her knee. Now people have it done all the time, even voluntarily to improve their vision.
The computer we had (which was a rarity - I knew two other kids with access to one) ran at 1MHz and had 128k of RAM. The DVD-Rs I bought yesterday each hold something like 75,000 times as much data as its floppy disks.
If you could afford a modem at the time, all it was good for was hooking up to a corporate/university mainframe or a one-user-at-a-time bulletin board, with communication only slightly faster than a teletype. Now we can communicate with people in any country online.
In 1978, the closest you could get to a cellphone was the radio phones that emergency workers carried in their vehicles.
We may not be sending manned missions to Jupiter or riding hoverboards, but a lot of things we take for granted now *were* Flash Gordon material back then. I don't think there's anything wrong with dreaming about the possibilities for nanotechnology manufacturing in 2030. Twenty-five years is a LONG time for technology.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Also interesting is the fact that this is one of the very first projects that throws real money at a collaboration effort betw. the African and ... well any other continent really.
Whether it will be of much use like the France - Britain connection is maybe less than obvious. I Like going to the UK via the tunnel (I live in Denmark), but only a very limited amount of people outside Spain and Morocco will choose to travel through the tunnel as air travel is much cheaper these days.
Transporting goods will probably be a doodle compared to what's done today. One thing that seems to be working on the otherwise somewhat defunct African continent is the rail infrastructure, so in this respect a tunnel is a very good idea that might increase the cashflow into Africa.
All in all it is probably a good idea that will no doubt be delayed and a lot pricier than projected - but then so are a lot of projects on this scale. Just have a look at the Danish Metro in Copenhagen: twice the price and half the performance!
Shihar wondered whether this is wasteful government spending.
My response is simple: no, it isn't. It is an effective and cheap means of promoting economic development and the development of democratic societies in Muslim nations in Northern Africa. Those kinds of cooperative infrastructure projects are, in fact, the only choice Europe seems to have for peaceful co-existence with its African and Middle Eastern neighbors.
To give Americans some idea of its order of magnitude, I made a comparison to a recent Middle East-related project by the US: the tunnel's cost is going to be a tiny fraction of what the US spent on the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq also was justified as promoting the development of democracies in Muslim societies. In fact, its cost is probably going to be small compared even to something like a single stealth bomber (which costs several billion dollars).
So, do you get it now? I responded to Shihar's question by a cost/benefit comparison with a related project recently carried out by the US, as well as with standard military hardware. Sorry if I didn't spell it out clearly enough the first time for you to understand.
The deepest tunnel currently is in Japan and is 100m below a 140m channel. Engineering a tunnel 240m down is seriously non-trivial, and Japan is seriously hooked-in when it comes to engineering. Spain and Morocco, really have no hope of pulling this off without outsourcing the whole deal.
From the spanish POV: Well, we have no experience in building tunnels under the sea, but we have a lot of experience in bulding them "under the mountain". Madrid is sorrounded by mountains and is still connected by high speed railways and a lot of highways. We've got a really steep orography in many places of Spain. Don't dismiss our engineering expertise so fast, you insensitive clod!
It might be a misprint, but a tunnel under the water doesn't have to be as complicated as one under Boston. It's just a big concrete-lined bore-hole.
There are two ways of building a tunnel under water, one is to use TBMs, the other is sink prefabricated sections. The former is less disruptive in the middle of a shipping lane.
It doesn't even need to be ventilated, as the trains will be run by electricity. By comparison, a car tunnel under a city is shallow and has to be ventilated. (so people don't die from suffocating on trapped car exhaust.)
A train tunnel still needs to be ventilated.
25 years ago, half the population of the earth was poor, had no easy access to fresh water, and millions were fleeing war and disorder. Today, half the population of the earth is poor, and has no easy access to fresh water, and millions are fleeing war and disorder.
Abigail
The length is shorter but the sea depth is WAY deeper. The article says "only 300 metres deep". Christ! Only??!!!
The tunnel itself will probably need to be a good 50 metres beneath that so we're talking a damn deep tunnel built under HUGE water pressure conditions.
Also for the tunnel to be usable by large freight trains the grade can't be very steep so it'll have to have a large amount of tunnel either side of
the deepest point. This is going to be one expensive project and I for one can't see Morocco being able to afford even close to 50% of the cost.
Why spain want to do this beats me , Morocco has little to offer europe for either import or export (other than illegal immigrants) so it seems to be this
is probably little more than political back slapping. Call me a cynic but....
As others have pointed, Spain has issues with terrorism as well. And so did Britain in the late 80s and early 90s when the Channel Tunnel was being planned and constructed, but it didn't stop it from being built. There have been three major terrorist attacks (WTC 1993, WTC 2003 and the Pentagon) in the North Eastern United States in the last decade, but it doesn't stop the US from commencing construction projects.
It is silly to compare how a super power is spending on a war over seas to how a nation with only a fraction the GDP is building a very expensive tunnel to Morocco.
It is precisely because Spain's financial means are more limited that the comparison is informative. Spain doesn't have the option of fighting big wars to deal with threats. Instead, they have to find means of promoting peace, development, and cooperation. One way they believe they can do that is through cooperative infrastructure projects.
Of course, it's dangerous to think that just because the US is a superpower, it is exempt from forces like budget deficits or capital flow. The current strength of the US military is bought at a staggering social and economic cost and it is anybody's guess how long it can be sustained.
The fact that the US spends lots of money does not add or subtract to the viability of such a massive government projects for Spain and Morocco. It is a cute commentary on US foreign policy, but plays no effect on whether these two nations should try and dig a tunnel under the sea.
Unless you have information that the rest of us don't, for now, we can assume that the Spanish have done their homework: as economic data shows, they are in far better control of their budget than the US is.
Note, incidentally, that digging has gotten a whole lot cheaper over the last decade and that there are many alternative tunnel technologies available as well, so there is no reason to believe that this project will be more than a blip in the Spanish budget.
Back to the topic at hand, the point was, regardless of what the US is doing, building such a tunnel is expensive. It is only justified if there is going to be some net gain for the two countries involved.
Yes, and the net gain is improved cooperation between Europe and Northern Africa, as well as a better shot at democratization and economic development in Morocco. Those are long-term goals that require long-term investments. Proponents of projects like these recognize that.
Yes, despite of this all, I think building a tunnel to a third world nation would be a bad idea for Spain.
Well, and Europeans don't want their neighboring third world nations to remain third world nations forever. That's why they try to integrate them and cooperate with them and why they invest in such projects.
The US approach to foreign policy, military intervention and a degree of isolationism, just is not workable for Europeans. While Europe is capable of creating a military to rival that of the US, Europeans are not willing to pay the financial or political cost of that. Furthermore, Europe's geographic location makes US-style isolationism impractical.
And that's the point of my original comparison between the Iraq war and this kind of project. Once you understand the relationship, you will understand why this kind of project makes financial sense to Europeans and why they can afford it.
I have to wonder if the boarding security for the trains running in this proposed tunnel would at least meet that of air travel?
Hopefully not. The security level of air travel, at least where I live, has reached the ridiculous.
An example:
Today I caught a plane. Now it turns out I had forgotten to take a tiny little nail clipper out of my toiletry bag before going through airport security... As a result I was taken aside, and had to remove the nail clipper for inspection to see if the so-small-it-is-near-impossible-to-hold nail clipper could be used as a 'weapon'. wtf! Seriously, although sanity prevailed and they let me keep the clippers, they didn't ask to inspect any of the pens and pencils in my possession which would have made a far better weapon. And seeing they confiscated the nail cutters of the lady in front of me, I'm surprised they let me keep my car keys as they would be a much more effective weapon. Better still, I could just use my fist and feet. I'm sure I could inflict significantly worse wounds with them than what would be possible with that lady's pincy nail cutters.
Rant aside, the whole airport security thing has got a little rediculous and seems to be driven largely by paranoia. Also it is inconsistent. They scanned my bag, but anything (non-metallic) on my person would have made it through security just fine. Hence by the time this tunnel is complete, I hope people are a little less paranoid.
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Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE